Brand your channel!

This is probably the most important step for promoting your YouTube channel. Even though this step doesn’t involve any promotion, none of your marketing methods are worth anything if your channel’s branding is off. People judge based off looks, especially YouTube subscribers, and no one will want to stay around for a channel without an avatar or channel art. You can use Canva to create custom video covers (thumbnails) and great headers for your channel. To keep things consistent, try to theme your imagery by choosing 1 or 2 fonts, and 3 to 4 colors. Use them on everything, and you have yourself a consistent brand. If you have a website, blog and social media platform, try to tie all their branding elements together by using the same colors, fonts, and recognizable logos.

Don't get caught up with numbers

It’s easy to fall into the trap of counting your subscribers and views all the time. You just want your hard work to pay off and watch your channel grow! Unfortunately, there’s no exact formula for growing a YouTube channel. So, for now, you need not worry about your numbers. You can ignore them for a bit while you work on producing regular content and shaping your brand. The best thing you can do for your channel when it’s brand new is sticking to a schedule that allows you to release consistent content to the best of your ability, and worry about numbers a bit later.

You'll probably be a little nervous

It’s nerve-racking talking in front of the camera, and you’ll probably start off shaky (and it will probably be obvious) but I’ve never seen a YouTube channel start off wonderfully. It takes work. There’s an ‘awkward phase’ you must get through before your content can start looking brilliant. Think about the first blog post you ever wrote. It was terrible, right? But you improved. Don’t let your nervousness consume you and put you off sharing content. Work as hard as you can on each video and watch it back to see the areas you need to improve on. Most importantly, listen to the feedback your viewers comment with. The suggestions of your audience are most important.

Don't self-promote too much

No one wants to be ‘that guy’ who promotes themselves far too often. The most annoying thing you can receive on a video you’ve worked hard on is spam reading “follow for follow” or “please check out my channel”. This won’t encourage anyone to look at your content. It’s just annoying, and you’ll end up ignored or even reported. Grow your following and motivate others to view your channel by engaging naturally and genuinely with other channels, by leaving feedback and kind comments.

Dealing with hateful comments

This contradicts my last point a little, but try not to take YouTube comments too seriously. A YouTube channel is not for the faint-hearted. I don’t know what it is about YouTube, but people are particularly relentless and cruel over there. However, there are plenty of supportive people over on YouTube. You need to learn to focus on them instead of the hate. If you do receive rude comments, delete them and forget about them. The block button is there for a reason, so use it when people are behaving inappropriately. If things get out of hand, don’t be afraid to disable the comments on a few videos for if you need to.

Engage

It looks unprofessional and just plain rude if new YouTube channels don’t engage with their viewers. Take some time out of each week to read your comments and questions and answer them. This helps users to want to revisit your channel as they’ll view you as a kind and genuine user. It’s also a good time to revert to the last point made and clear out the hateful and ‘spammy’ messages.

Share your stuff

Your work is unlikely to be noticed by more than a few people if you just upload it to YouTube and leave it there. You need to promote your content elsewhere and drive traffic to your channel. Take as much time sharing your work as you spent creating it. Post it on your business social media pages, your personal social media pages, mix them into blog posts, and get your content out there for everyone to see.